In this post Geir Syvertsen (special counselor in Østfold County Council) discusses the career guidance that is available to inmates in the Norwegian prison system and a Nordic project to develop and improve this provision.
In Norway the Correctional service has the main responsibility for the execution of sentences and has 31 prisons distributed among the country’s five correctional service regions. Many of the prisons consist of several departments. There are a total of 30 wards with a high security level, 23 wards with a lower security level and 8 transitional housing. In June 2024, there were approximately 3060 inmates in Norwegian prisons.
Social justice and the import-model
According to international agreements and conventions prison inmates have the same rights to training and education as other citizens. The idea that everyone, including inmates in prisons, should have the same rights as everybody else is in line with social justice. For this to happen in Norway, the so-called Import-model is applied. This means that education services, health services, religious provision and library services are offered inside the prisons by outside public institutions.
In Norway the county councils are professionally and administratively responsible for education in the prisons, and local upper secondary schools owned by the county councils have the practical responsibility for the education and training. The Upper Secondary schools also provide career guidance services. It is common for a teacher to also have the role of career guidance counsellor. There are prisons in all the country’s counties so that there is at least one upper secondary school in each county that has a department that carries out training in prisons. The exception is Oslo, where the Grønland Adult Education Center is responsible for training in the prisons. The state administrator in Vestland has the national responsibility for all training in correctional services.
A mission from the Nordic Network for Adult learning
In 2018 the Nordic network for adult learning (NVL) put together a group of ten persons, two from each of the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). The groups` mission was in short to present suggestions on how to strengthen career guidance services in prisons in the Nordic countries.
In the spring of 2020, the group delivered its output in the form of two posters. One poster contained information directed towards prison inmates. This poster aimed at giving information about the existence of the career guidance services in the prisons, and what these services can offer to the individual. A fundamental part of having access to the services is to know that they exist, and to know what they can contribute to the individual.
The other poster was directed towards those who work in prisons; prison guards, management, teachers/ career guidance counsellors and others. This poster describes what career guidance in prisons should contain and was meant to be normative. It had four headlines or themes: Access to career guidance services, the content of the services, coherence in the services and quality. As many of the inmates are from different countries, the first poster was later translated to English. Both posters were distributed to prisons by e-mail, and they were made in such a way as they could easily be printed locally.
The work was continued
The two representatives from Norway in the NVL group were Gry Helgerud (teacher and career guidance counselor in Ringerike prison) and Geir Syvertsen (special counselor in Østfold County Council). We disseminated our work and told about the posters on different occasions. We also wanted to build on the momentum created by the work in the NVL-group and decided to continue our collaboration. The continued work resulted in a booklet that describes comprehensive career guidance services in prisons. The booklet has a self-evaluation element and contains some tips for practitioners. In accordance with recommendations in the booklet that all should have access to qualitative good information, vocational and educational fairs have been arranged in Ringerike prison. The first one was arranged in 2023, and the second in 2024. This is to be an annual event. The fairs are linked to access and content of the services, and also to coordination and collaboration. External representatives from the education sector and the world of work were invited in to contribute at the fair.
The booklet is largely inspired by the Gatsby benchmarks for good career guidance, developed in England by The Gatsby Foundation, and also on other sources. We built our work on:
In April 2024 we presented the booklet at a conference for career guidance counselors in prisons at a conference in Hamar, Norway. We got positive feedback from participants at the conference, and have since heard that some of them have worked with the booklet`s content in the prisons where they are career guidance counselors. The presentation at the conference in Hamars marked the end of our collaboration that had started in the NVL group. Gry Helgerud will continue the work to apply the recommendations from the booklet in Ringerike prison.
Social justice and customised services
In accordance with principles of social justice, everyone should have equal access to career guidance services and education. In Norway the County Councils are responsible for delivering these services in prisons. Career guidance must be adjusted to individual needs, and it must be adapted to what is possible and appropriate in the specific context and the present situation. Prisons vary in several ways, e.g. in security levels and numbers of inmates. Different solutions must be found for different settings and environments. Regardless of context, the services offered must be accessible, have the necessary content, they must be coordinated, and they must be of high quality.
